How true is that? I'm not that familiar with the politics of Brazil, but I was under the impression that Lula was fairly well regarded in leftist spaces. What reasons to people have to call Lula a Neolib? Or did I just run into a pocket of ultra-lefties?
Fair. I don't have as much criticism for soc dems in global south countries though. The primary criticism of social democrats in Western capitalist and imperial core countries is that you still have economies that are fundamentally built on imperial exploitation, so building off of that to fund social spending programs is just a more even distribution of the spoils of imperialism. That critique isn't as relevant in the context of global south countries which are the targets of imperialism.